World peace and eternal economic growth

[Sigillum Militum]

I consider them to be two fantasies with a common link.

They both assume that resources that don't exist can be furnished somehow.

We live in a world undergoing food, water, and energy crises along with increasing population and consumption (more than willing to furnish details for all of this but it should be old hat if you follow world news) and yet, many people believe that they can somehow fight thermodynamic inevitability.

Is there any reason they should be taken seriously?

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Capitalism creates over-consumption without even a minority reaping any of the benefits.Most of the things produced are worthless commodities which end up being destroyed because no one buys them. You are right when you say that there is a limited number of resources but socialism will aim to provide for everyone while using much less.

Someday,as far as I am aware,materials will run out; but such will happen under any system and under capitalism that will be sooner rather than later.

[Ostrinski]

World peace cannot be achieved in a global capitalist society for reasons that needn't be specified.

Perpetual growth is necessary for the international capitalist network to sustain itself. If capital is not expanding into new markets it is failing. But at the same time, like you said, there is a finite number of exploitable resources, finite amount of exploitable labor power, and thus a finite number of markets.

This will inevitably lead to a crisis and global revolution.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I consider them to be two fantasies with a common link.

They both assume that resources that don't exist can be furnished somehow.

I can understand how that can apply to eternal economic growth in the capitalist mode, but my understanding is that even under capitalism, a state of peace consumes fewer resources (certainly it is less destructive of them) than a state of war.


We live in a world undergoing food, water, and energy crises along with increasing population and consumption (more than willing to furnish details for all of this but it should be old hat if you follow world news) and yet, many people believe that they can somehow fight thermodynamic inevitability.

The carrying capacity of the Earth is a variable influenced by many factors. Malthus seriously misjudged our ability to do more with less. What leads you to believe that you have not made the same error, only later?


Is there any reason they should be taken seriously?

I'm willing to accept that world peace may be an impossibility, even under a communist society. Having fewer things to fight about does not mean we would have nothing to fight about, nor does it mean that there can't be new things to fight about.

As for eternal economic growth? I reckon the capitalist mode of production is too focused on short-term gain to be able to achieve that.

However, I'm certain that an egalitarian post-capitalist mode of eternal economic growth is possible, which grows with the more sedate pace of population increase as opposed to the manic and frenetic demands of hyperstimulated markets. In order for it to be eternal, however, it would have to expand into space. Since such a post-capitalist mode would be focused more on the long-term, expanding into space would make sense in spite of the high initial costs.

Hopefully when capitalism burns itself out, the fallout will be insufficient to prevent the establishment of such a post-capitalist economic mode.

[l'Enfermé]

We live in a world undergoing food, water, and energy crises along with increasing population and consumption (more than willing to furnish details for all of this but it should be old hat if you follow world news) and yet, many people believe that they can somehow fight thermodynamic inevitability.
No we don't. There is more than enough food in the world to feed everyone in it. The issue is the distribution of food. Water is not an issue either.

Regarding finite resources, you won't consider them so finite if you know that Human colonization and exploitation of space is a certain inevitability, unless capitalism self-destructs human society before it happens.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Regarding finite resources, you won't consider them so finite if you know that Human colonization and exploitation of space is a certain inevitability, unless capitalism self-destructs human society before it happens.

I am an enthusiastic advocate of the exploration, exploitation and colonisation of extraterrestrial space, yet even so I would not go so far as to say that I "know" that such a thing is an "inevitability" if we manage to outlast capitalism.

My crystal ball has never been reliable.

[Sigillum Militum]

Capitalism creates over-consumption without even a minority reaping any of the benefits.Most of the things produced are worthless commodities which end up being destroyed because no one buys them.

You're gonna have to give me some figures here.

[Blake's Baby]

Well, in the 1980s the UN calculated that we were producing 8 times more food than was needed to feed everyone in the world. At the same time as millions of people in Africa were starving because the food was in the wrong place (because it wasn't 'economic' to sell or even give food to the African countries where it was needed most, eg Etheopia). Since then American and parts of Europe have just gotten fatter, while much of Africa and parts of Asia have gotten deader.

Sure, the population's gone up. Has food producition gone down? Don't think so, I think that's increased too. So if we're now only producing 5 times as much food as we need...

Millions of tonnes of edible food is wasted every year - some because it's past its sell-by date and companies would rather bin it than give it away, some because it looks ugly and people won't buy it, some because it's just dumped to keep prices high.

3 days of America's military budget is enough to provide fresh water supplies and sewerage for everyone on the planet who doesn't already have them.

A field of soya can feed 33 times more people than the same sized field used to grow grain to feed cows to be made into burgers.

People from North America consume 22 times more energy per person (not just as food but in terms of fossil fuel etc) than people from East Africa.

Go on, go looking for statistics - there's this new thing called the internet, it's quite a mine of information.